What to do with boxes of old family photos.
Start with whoever can still name the people in them, and then sort, scan and store. Pick the 50 that matter most and do those first. Scan prints at 300 dpi, or 400 to 600 if you might enlarge them. Keep copies in at least two places, and store the originals somewhere cool and dry, not in the attic or basement.
Before anything else, ask who's in them.
A scan can wait, but the person who knows that's your great-aunt may not be around forever. Take ten photos to your oldest relative, and record the conversation on your phone. Ask who's in each one, where it was, and what was going on. These questions help once they start talking.
Sort them into three piles.
- Do first: people you can name, and the ones nobody else has. Start with about 50.
- Do later: everything you'd still like to keep.
- Offer to someone else: duplicates, and other people's vacations. A relative may want them even if you don't.
Handle and label them with care.
The Library of Congress gives this advice:
- Clean hands, and hold each photo by its edges.
- Avoid writing on photos. If you must, use a soft graphite pencil, on the back, near the edge. Writing on the sleeve is better.
- No tape, sticky notes or glue.
For an undated photo, look for a photographer's name and town on the mount. City directories can often tell you when they were in business.
Scan them.
| Setting | |
|---|---|
| Prints, 4x6 and 5x7 | 300 dpi |
| Prints you may enlarge to 8x10 or more | 400 or 600 dpi |
| Slides | Around 1900 dpi |
No scanner? Google's PhotoScan app does a good first pass on a phone. Scan the back too if there's writing on it. Name each file so it makes sense without you, like 1948-joe-and-mary-wedding-omaha, and put the names in the photo's description, so they travel with the file. Save Metadata explains how.
Keep them safe.
- The scans: make at least two copies and keep them in different places. Move them to current storage every five to seven years.
- The originals: the Library of Congress says 70°F or below and 30 to 50% relative humidity. That rules out attics, basements, vents and outside walls.
- Albums: avoid "magnetic" pages, colored pages and sticky pages. If a photo is stuck down, don't force it. Scan it where it is.
Share them.
Send the best ones to relatives first, with a question: "Do you know who this is?" FamilySearch Memories is free, and you can tag photos to people in its tree. Check each photo's visibility, because public memories can turn up in search engines. Keep photos of living people private unless they agree.
Or just ask.
Tell Ancestral Fire one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
What doesn't the tree know about Patrick?
Your imported file records Patrick's birth around 1823, immigration to Boston around 1847, work as a cooper, and death in 1858. A note says he died of consumption, but the file has no attached birth or death record or 1850 census to verify details; his parents are named Patrick and Mary Johanna, but their dates aren't given.
From the Kennedy family's published tree: what an answer looks like when it says what it doesn't know.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: The Kennedy family tree, from Wexford to Dallas.
Keep reading.
- What happens to your family tree when you die. It depends on where your tree lives.
- Storyworth alternatives for a family gift. The main alternatives to Storyworth are Remento, which turns spoken answers into a book, and Ancestral Fire, which starts from the family already on record so nobody has to write.